I couldn’t stop smiling after reading a young Leftist’s horrified realization that Trump is a successful president who has undone all things Obama.

A friend sent me a link to an article in the online student newspaper at his son’s college. The student author, proving himself wiser than many in the adult media to which I’m sure he aspires, has figured out something that horrifies him: Trump is an amazingly effective president and he’s systematically undoing everything Obama did. Honestly, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh uproariously when reading The Trump Administration — and that heart is not mine.

Here are just a few exquisite gems from the opinion piece. I do urge you to read the whole thing. You’ll be feeling great about where we are in 2018 when you’re done.

Although student writer Matthew Raskob starts off by reassuring himself that Trump is disorganized, negligent, deceitful, and that nobody likes him, the truth quickly leaks out. For example, there’s the truth about Mueller’s failed investigation, although the student rushes to tell us that the Alinsky metric still works — even though there’s no fire, Mueller managed to envelope Trump in smoke:

Moreover, Robert Mueller’s investigation of l’affaire Russe continues apace. Whether or not it implicates the president personally, it has further cemented the perception of scandal among all but the most unctuous Trump apologists.

Before I go further, let me remind you that the above is an example of the type of thinking you get at a liberal arts college that charges more than $52,000 a year for tuition: Even though the FBI has utterly failed in its mission, the fact that it wrongly impugned someone’s character must be counted as a victory.

That’s just ephemera, though. The article’s meat is to be found in Raskob’s horror that, if you push through the slime in which Mueller is coating Trump, you find someone who has been remarkably successful at carrying out a far-reaching conservative agenda:

Closer scrutiny of the Trump administration’s record reveals a strikingly different reality. Through appointments to the federal judiciary, executive actions and regulatory policies — or perhaps more accurately, lack thereof — Trump has managed to overturn a substantial portion of Barack Obama’s legacy and shape American domestic politics and policy for years to come. Thanks to the brevity of our collective attention span, the Republican tax bill has now faded from the public consciousness, but its lasting impact upon the nation’s already grievously unequal distribution of wealth should not be underestimated. Even if Democrats regain the White House and Congress, they will find it difficult to do away with this legislation, despite the unpopularity of its specific provisions (see Obama’s extension of the Bush tax cuts). Additionally, although Trump failed to repeal the ACA, he has managed to cripple it through executive actions and the tax bill’s repeal of the individual mandate.

Let’s hope that Raskob has a long enough attention span and memory in a few months to realize that lower taxes benefit everyone, doing away with that “grievious[] unequal distribution of wealth” he decries. In this, the new scheme is distinct from the old tax scheme, which primarily benefited government cronies. (Call it “fascism lite,” if you will — a system in which private ownership continues, but profits only if it’s at government’s beck and call.)

The wailing and gnashing of teeth, of course, does not stop there: [Read more…]

Does it get any better, after Donald Trump’s spectacularly successful first year, to watch him “Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift style?

I missed last year this cute Auto-Tune video, which gets Trump to sing a verse and chorus from Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. I don’t know if I would have appreciated it last March as much as I do today. After all, in March, Trump hadn’t accomplished anything beyond getting elected. Now, though, after a brilliant first year in office, we can see just how successfully he was able to shake off all the venom and road-blocks that came his way.

Yes, the haters did “hate, hate, hate,” and they kept accusing Trump of having “nothing in his brain,” but Trump was able to “shake it off “– and while shaking, he

appointed an extraordinarily brilliant strict constructionist to the Supreme Court;

appointed 12 strict constructionist judges to the federal appellate courts;

defeated ISIS;

got Europe to pony up for NATO;

passed the biggest tax reform bill ever;

triggered and presided over a staggering economic boom;

began the process of non-violently defeating the Palestinians and their genocidal narrative;

finally did the morally, legally, and historically correct thing of acknowledging that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and that the American embassy should therefore be located there;

presided over the lowest unemployment for blacks and women in almost two decades and the lowest unemployment for Hispanics ever;

drastically shrank the mostly unconstitutional administrative branch of government while showing no signs of stopping;

withdrew us from the disastrous and unconstitutional Paris Accords;

got North Korea to realize that there is a target on its back, in part by stopping the insane appeasement that’s been the American norm since Clinton and in part by making China understand that it needs to rein in its rogue child;

increased American fossil fuel production, making it the top producer in the world and, as part of that, weakening Russian power and (probably) helping push Saudi Crown Prince Salman along with his wonderful and drastically needed reforms;

supported the Iranian protesters trying to shake off their evil and dysfunctional government;

revealed mainstream media members to be whining, bullying, stupid operatives for the Democrat party;

made Leftists go insane (which I totally enjoyed);

began cracking down on pedophile sex crimes all across America (one of his least reported success stories);

brought back the rule of law regarding illegal immigration (go ICE); and

began the process of restoring a military badly damaged by Obama’s eight years in power.

Trump sure knows how to “shake it off” — so celebrate this cute video.

(And yes, I’m sure I forgot some of Trump’s accomplishments. Please remind me in the comments.)

Is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact because of psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs

A year and a half ago, pundits and pollsters gave Trump virtually no chance of winning the Republican nomination for President. Indeed, over half of America thought it was a joke when Trump entered the GOP primary in 2016. Feel free to raise your hand if you were one of the many.

Our country was in dire straits at that point. Obama, through regulatory overreach, new taxation, and Obamacare, had shackled our economy. Worse, Obama had taken our nation so far past the point of a constitutional crisis that it threatened a de facto end to our American experiment. As the November 2016 election approached, we were (and still very much are), to quote Victor Davis Hanson, in an “existential war for the soul of America.”

Our Supreme Court system, with its unelected justices, was poised to sit as a Politburo, subject to the addition of just one more Proggie justice. It badly needed to be reformed in line with Art. III.

Obama had entered into oppressive so-called foreign “treaties” — i.e., the Paris Accord and the Iran Deal — without Article II approval from the Senate. Those Frankenstein’s monsters needed to be revoked.

The list of necessary domestic battles at the end of Obama’s eight years went on and on: The economy had to be unleashed by rolling back the regulatory explosion under Obama. Rule of law and equality of justice for all — Hildabeast included — needed to be reestablished.

None of the above even touches upon Obama’s foreign policy accomplishments (or, more accurately, disasters), which left us with a Middle East in flames, ISIS ascendant, Iran on a glide path towards developing a nuclear arsenal, and North Korea building out its nuclear arsenal. Our new President would have to deal with a far more dangerous world than the one Obama had inherited in 2009.

As the 2016 primaries heated up, sixteen of the seventeen candidates, all of those not named Trump, seemed to be up to the task of righting at least some of the above. Then came the first of Trump’s Black Swan Events: he clinched the Republican nomination. Every aspect of that moment ticked off an item on the Black Swans checklist:

Unforeseen: You bet’cha. By the end of the primary season, pundits were describing Trump’s victory as a “hostile takeover” and a “coup.”

Consequential: Yes, because at a critical moment for our country, when we most needed an effective leader to stop the prog juggernaut, we instead got the seemingly least capable man for the job, and probably the only man who could lose the election for Republicans. (Or so I believed at the time. Given how close the election was, and given that probably only Trump could successfully make the case to Reagan Democrats in the mid-West states that he would turn the economy around to their benefit, I question whether any other Republican could have won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and with them, the 2016 election.)

Inappropriately rationalized afterwards: Yes, in the extreme, by me and a lot of other NeverTrumpers, but few as unhinged as Bill Kristol. Most NeverTrumpers, however, came back to the Republican fold over the issue of a Supreme Court nomination and Trump’s promise to nominate a constitutional conservative.

Then came the second Black Swan event, when Trump won the Presidency on November 8, 2016. Again, the Black Swans checklist plays out:

Unforeseen: Virtually no pollster or pundit gave Trump any realistic shot of winning the general election — at least until votes were being tallied across the nation at about 9:30 Eastern Time on election night. Talk about shock and awe. If you need a quick shot of schadenfreude, YouTube has many videos showing pundits making a real quick trip through Kübler-Ross’s first four stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, with acceptance still not having kicked in).

Consequential: Yes, because, as Kurt Schlicter has been wont to put it, Trump’s election meant “not Hillary.” The final Progressive offensive on the fabric of our nation that a Hildabeast presidency promised had just suffered a defeat akin to — and as consequential as — Drake’s defeat of the Armada Spain sent across the Channel in 1588 A.D. to overthrow the British government.

Inappropriately rationalized afterwards? Heh. Lol. ROFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL. The Proggie left still hasn’t come to terms with the election, believing it to have been the culmination of Trump voters releasing their inner racist (according to the race hustlers), Trump voters releasing their inner misogynist (according to the 3rd wave vagina voters), and Trump’s evil plan, hatched in a urine soaked room in Moscow with Vladimir Putin and hookers, to steal the election by having Russia: (a) release actual DNC staff emails showing that the DNC did in fact rig the primaries to make sure Bernie lost to Hildabeast; and (b) by running what we now know was about $350,000 worth of ads on Twitter and Facebook, most of which did not appear until after the election. Russia’s laughably small outlay managed to steal the election from Hildabeast, who spent $1,200,000,000 on the election. My but those Rooskies are efficient.

And now we come to question of the moment. Was Trump’s first year in office so surprising and consequential as to itself rise to the level of a Black Swan event? This post says “yes”:

Unforeseen: I and many another NeverTrumpers thought Trump could well be the death of the conservative movement.

Consequential: Given that Trump is on track to be the most consequential conservative president in our nation’s history, I think that the answer must be a “yes — it was consequential.” As Mark Tapscott put it at Instapundit, Trump may well be “out-gippering the Gipper.” It is astounding that Trump is following through with a vengeance on virtually all of his campaign promises.

Inappropriately rationalized afterwards? Given the daily inundation of MSM primal screams that Trump is an _________________ (fill in the blank with your favorite pejorative). . . . Well, I’ll leave you to answer that one yourself.

With that as preamble, let’s examine the specifics of Trump’s first year accomplishments: [Read more…]

Do you remember the old Rodney Dangerfield movie, Back To School? Dangerfield plays a self-made industrialist millionaire who follows his son to a fancy Ivy League school. Some of the movie’s best humor comes from the culture clash between the real (or “normal” as Kurt Schlichter would say) Dangerfield and the poncy, disconnected professor who lives in a world of theory, unrelated to facts.

In the pivotal culture class scene, Dangerfield schools a business professor who prefers to deal in widgets rather than facts and, indeed, who thinks that his theories are the equivalent of facts:

Here’s a down-and-dirty Bookworm Beat that’s still replete with things to entertain and inform.

I’d meant to blog more today, as well as to clean my office, but I had a sick dog and that took both my time and my attention. All is well with the dog — it’s a long term problem and we’re doing maintenance care.

And now for some quick links:

Gadzooks! It’s Gorsuch: Last week, when Neil Gorsuch was confirmed, Myron Magnet wrote a much-read article about the revolution his ascension to the Supreme Court represents:

Suppose, now that Gorsuch has been confirmed and sworn in, it understood and intended to overturn the administrative state’s usurpation of the Constitution. Suppose, moreover, that it understood the promiscuous lawlessness with which the justices have been making laws out of thin air for half a century and more—claiming some vague basis in the Bill of Rights or the Fourteenth Amendment—and resolved to end that abuse, exercising only judgment, not will. Suppose President Trump got to appoint one more justice in the Gorsuch and Scalia mold, creating an irresistible majority that upheld Madison’s original Constitution instead of Wilson’s “living” one.

Magnet’s dream may well be in the process of being realized. How do I know? Because of the manic, fevered emanations from the Left after Gorsuch’s first official appearance on the bench, all stating that Gorsuch is a mentally-disabled moron wrongfully occupying Merrick Garland’s seat. They’re terrified:

After his startlingly humiliating performance during his first day on the bench yesterday, it’s possible his earlier reticence to answer the Senators’ questions was because he didn’t understand them. As it turns out, Gorsuch is a simpleton with almost childlike understanding of the law – and the existing Justices on both sides of the spectrum already seem to have concluded he’s an idiot.

In fact, Gorsuch was pointing out that the answer lies in actually reading the statutory language — and he was embarrassing those attorneys who were trying to make things complicated in hopes of getting a ruling that allows agencies to make their own laws. (I’ve lost my link for this, but I’ll fill it in as soon as I find it.)

2. The terrible presidency of Barack Obama is beginning to be acknowledged.

Following President Trump’s order to attack Syria about 63 hours after the Syrian regime seemingly used chemical weapons, even many in the mainstream media couldn’t help but contrast his prompt response with Obama’s nonresponse to Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013. And almost every report further noted that Obama failed to do anything after having promised that he would regard the use of chemical weapons by Assad as crossing a “red line.”

Likewise, Obama’s do-nothing policies vis-a-vis North Korea are being contrasted with Trump’s warnings to leader Kim Jung Un about further testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pressure on China’s leaders to rein in the North Korean regime.

These contrasts are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which being there is now hope that Obama’s star will dim as time goes on.

This will come as somewhat of a surprise to those on the left, but many of us who are not on the left believe that Obama did more damage to America than any previous president — economically, militarily and socially.

The Gorsuch nomination, pitting Originalism against a “living Constitution,” is a fight for America’s soul — so pay attention because this is important!

Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination has brought to the fore the seemingly dry argument about two competing theories of Constitutional interpretation, Originalism and the “living Constitution.” Gorsuch himself is an “originalist” while the Democrat party arrayed against him puts its faith in a “living Constitution.”

Two recent essays both discuss Originalism and “the living Constitution”: Prof. Glenn Reynolds’ “Who the People?” in USA Today, and Prof. Mary Bilder’s “The Constitution Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means” in the Boston Globe. Dry though the argument may seem to those not already steeped in the law, Progressives have turned this into the single most important issue facing our nation, so pay attention to this one.

Why is this so important? Because whichever of those two theories, Originalism or living Constitution, wins goes to the heart of how we will be governed in the future. It will determine whether we will be a Republic under a government with limited powers that the people control through the ballot box — as the people who drafted the Constitution envisioned — or whether we will be a nation pushed ever further left by non-democratic, extra-constitutional means, morphing to the point that the Constitution is meaningless and our Republic gutted in a brave, new, progressive, socialist nation.

The competing theories are easily explained. “Originalism” is a wholly apolitical theory holding that one interprets the Constitution as it was understood when passed. This is not inherently conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. It is merely adherence to a framework that allows for the people of the nation — not judges — to amend it.

Automatic adherence to Originalism explains why, for more than a century, there were no politics attendant upon confirming Supreme Court justices or judges holding other positions in the federal system. Judges were not ideologues, using their position to create new laws or Constitutional rights; they were just judges, applying the Constitution and the law as written to the facts before them. Progressivism was not ascendant in American politics until Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1913. Only by the 1980s, after several decades of decisions from Progressive activist judges, did legal scholars coin the word “Originalism” to apply to the traditional judicial approach to the Constitution.

In an act of pure projection, progressives have falsely labeled Originalism as “conservative.” As Prof. Reynolds says in USA Today:

[C]ourts have a duty to enforce the Constitution as written, whether those results further the aims of a political majority or of a minority. When courts do so, even if they strike down laws passed by the majority, they are not engaging in judicial activism. They are simply doing their jobs. . . .

Arrayed against Originalism is the “living Constitution.” The very term is polish on excrement, much akin to “Democratic People’s Republic of [stick in the name of your preferred police state / dictatorship here].” Just as there is nothing Democratic or Republican about a socialist dictatorship of any stripe, there is nothing constitutional to be found in the theory of a “living Constitution.” The term is used to give an air of legitimacy to the wholly illegitimate.

Under the progressive socialist’s theory of a “living Constitution,” un-elected judges are free to ignore the original intent of those who crafted and voted in a referendum to pass our Constitution and take unto themselves the power unilaterally to proclaim new law or otherwise amend the Constitution upon their whim. The Constitution itself spells out, in Article 5, the only two means by which the Constitution could be amended — and neither of those include amendment by judicial fiat. The incredible genius of the system our Founders crafted, limiting the power of any one branch of government by a series of “checks and balances,” is lost through this judicial usurpation of power at the expense America’s citizens.

So how does Prof. Mary Bilder attempt to justify this obscene “living Constitution” assault on our republican form of government in her essay, “The Constitution Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means“? To begin with, what a perfect title. At least there she’s not hiding the ball. The contents of her essay, though, are a different matter entirely. To be that honest would be to invite a second watering of the tree of liberty.

Looking at this grab-bag post, I can see the common thread: valuing tight-knit communities, nuclear families, and each individual’s worth.

I know why Utah’s welfare is working. Megan McArdle wrote a much-talked-about article in which she looked at Utah, which has extremely good and affordable social services. The key to Utah’s successful welfare system, although I’m not sure she realizes it, lies in this paragraph:

The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice.

With a system like that, you’re not going to have the type of fraud that occurred in Minnesota. There, none of the bureaucrats who cut $118,000 in checks knew that the woman claiming an absent husband had, in fact, a gainfully employed husband living with her and their children. In Utah, where charity begins at the ward level, everyone would have known the woman’s marital situation and the fraud could not have happened.

All of this made me think of a fascinating talk I heard a few years ago. I learned that, before government welfare, America was not a cold, cruel place in which widows and orphans routinely died. Instead, America had a vast network of fraternal organizations that functioned as welfare organizations. As with the Mormon wards, these “welfare” agencies worked extremely well because they took place at the community level. That meant that those responsible for administering an organization’s funds knew if Joe Shmo was a layabout or a hard worker on hard times.

Utah’s hands-on approach has managed to run counter to the prevailing American system that separates the needy from the check-writers. Until we return to community-based charitable organizations, fraud and waste will be the rule of the day.

I don’t see us making that U-turn. Having passed the baton to the government, Americans are not suddenly going to enlist en masse in the Kiwanis or the Shriners (more’s the pity).

Mike Pence’s “wife” policy shows that he’s a decent and smart man. Progressives are having a field day with the fact that, if Mike Pence is have a dinner tête-à-tête with a woman, that woman will always be his wife. Here’s a tweet perfectly summarizing the hysteria:

In a world in which Leftism and Islam have joined in battle for ascendancy, lies are the coin of the realm and truth is a rare and precious commodity.

The posts to which I’ve linked today, for the most part, illustrate the lies that permeate modern Western culture.

Law written in stone versus law written on sand. The Gorsuch nomination process revealed more clearly than usual how devoted the Left is to a “living” Constitution — that is, they dream of a Constitution the meaning of which is determined, not by its actual words and principles, but by whatever their current needs are. You can call it a Narcissists’ Constitution.

Jonah Goldberg has points out with exceptional clarity something point I should have seen a long time ago, which is that the Left does have its own immutable founding document. It’s just not the Constitution:

Consider Dianne Feinstein’s performance during the Gorsuch hearings in the Senate. “I firmly believe that our American Constitution is a living document, intended to evolve as our country evolves,” Feinstein said. “So, I am concerned when I hear that Judge Gorsuch is an ‘originalist’ and ‘strict constructionist.’”

Yeah, okay. But at the same time, Feinstein prattled on about how Roe v. Wade is a “super-precedent,” which I assume is a version of what Senator Arlen Specter (D., R. & I., Republic of Jackassistan) called a “super-duper precedent” — which actually sounds more intelligent when sung by Young Frankenstein.

After noting a bunch of court cases that reaffirmed Roe, Feinstein went on to make an additional point: “Importantly, the dozens of cases affirming Roe are not only about precedent, they are also about a woman’s fundamental and constitutional rights.”

I’m a bit fuzzy about what she sees as the distinction between fundamental and constitutional rights, but that doesn’t matter. Clearly her bedrock belief is that the process of constitutional evolution stopped with Roe v. Wade. One might say that instead of being a 1789 originalist, she’s an originalist of 1973.

Lies from the British police. The Metropolitan Police in London sent out this typically Leftist, entirely disingenuous tweet:

Today’s news could be called Sociopath News, thanks to scheming politicians and bureaucrats, scary athletes, sex-crazed illegal aliens, and more.

Officially, there’s no such thing as a “sociopath.” Sociopath is just lay person shorthand for someone with an antisocial personality disorder. So that we’re all on the same page here when I use the term sociopath, I’m relying on a definition I pulled off of WebMD:

Symptoms usually include antisocial behavior in which there is little concern for the rights of others such as indifference to the moral or legal standards of the region or community. Behavior patterns usually include excessive drinking, fighting and irresponsibility. A key to the disorder is long lasting, persistent, manipulative, exploitive actions and manners that determinedly ignore others.

There’s actually more to the definition, stuff about age of onset or proper diagnosis, but I’m skipping those parts. What I want to focus on in this round-up post are individuals or cultures that have “little concern for the rights of others,” are “indifferen[t] to the moral or legal standards of the region or community,” and who engage in “long lasting, persistent, manipulative, exploitive actions and manners that determinedly ignore others.” To the extent that don’t care about morals, their own physical or mental needs define the boundaries of their thoughts and conduct.

Athletes without conscience. I got stuck on the sociopath shtick yesterday when I was watching Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. It’s pay TV, so I can’t put a video here, but I’ll tell you briefly about the segment that triggered my thoughts about sociopathy. If you follow baseball, which I don’t, this story is probably already familiar to you:

Matt Bush entered professional baseball at 18. He got a big salary and started drinking with abandon. He was arrested repeatedly for all sorts of awful drunken behavior, but always apologized, got little wet noodle slaps, and walked away.

In 2012, while driving drunk, Bush ran over motorcyclist Tony Tufano, crushing Tufano’s entire upper body, including his face. It’s a miracle that Tufano is alive. In seconds, he went from being an active, engaged 72-year old to becoming an overweight, drug dependent, pain-ridden, deeply depressed recluse. Bush, meanwhile, drove away from the scene of his crime, only to be caught later.

Bush was sent to prison, then to a halfway house, and then ended up on the Texas Rangers because his escapades had left his throwing arm unimpaired. The Rangers exert control over him: He can’t drink, he can’t drive, and he has to live with this father. Fair enough. I believe in remorse, repentance, and redemption.

Except that as I watched the Real Sports segment, it appeared to me that Bush’s remorse was limited to the damage he did to his own life. To the extent he repented, it was to be sorry that he’d screwed himself up. Redemption? Well, you don’t get there from where he seems to be. This certainly could have been a nasty hit job through HBO’s selective editing (the media has been known to do this), but Bush as framed didn’t show one iota of sorrow for Tufano.

One got the feeling that Bush believes Tufano was at fault for getting under the wheels of Bush’s car. To the extent Bush has cleaned up his act, Tufano served as a useful device for triggering that change, but at no point did Bush acknowledge Tufano’s pain and suffering, nor did he seem to feel under any moral obligation to Tufano. Bush was satisfied that, having read the Bible in prison, God had forgiven him, and everything else was past history.

To me, that’s pure sociopath.

But it turns out that Bush is, if you’ll pardon the pun, Bush-league when it comes to sociopaths and sports. Only when you read about Bruno Fernandes de Souza will you fully understand the sociopath athlete:

Trump’s nominating Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court has left me happy, happy, happy. Trump fulfilled his campaign promise and did it with panache. Moreover, he’s doing everything with panache, so much so that I had to make this poster to ridicule the Progressives whose heads have been exploding for the last ten days:

Yeah, Trump is so good, and has started turning the ship of state around with such speed and vim that the same Lefties who thought Obama was a success already contend Trump is a failure. Woo-Hoo!!!

Oh, and Gorsuch: young, handsome (like a 1940s Hollywood typecast for up and coming honest judge), brilliant, a friend to Scalia, an originalist, a good writer (honest lawyers everywhere heave a sigh of relief) — yes! yes! yes!!!

Anyway, open thread here and a silly poster to go with it (click on image to enlarge):